Job description
Innovation Lab Director
Location: Remote (Based anywhere in the United States)
OVERVIEW
The climate emergency is the defining challenge of our time, demanding an urgent and transformative response. The window for small, incremental action has closed; the moment for bold, emergency-level action is now.
Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) operates at the intersection of clean energy advocacy, strategic media, and civic participation to accelerate global decarbonization. Through cutting-edge media strategies, ACE combats climate disinformation, flattens the curve of clean energy opposition, increases diverse participation in our democracy, and inspires meaningful action. Our programs engage tens of millions of people annually, mobilizing audiences that traditional climate efforts often overlook.
ACE’s dynamic and diverse team thrives in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment, united by a shared commitment to addressing the climate crisis. As we expand to meet this critical moment, we seek talented individuals eager to make an impact.
JOB SUMMARY
It’s a regular Friday at the Lab: In a workshop you’re leading, the civic engagement team just came up with a new approach to Gen Z engagement. Meanwhile, one of your researchers is piloting an AI tool that could revolutionize grant reporting. You head back to your desk to design next week’s hack-a-thon that might produce our next $10M program.
This is the kind of impact we’re building toward at ACE’s Better Lab — an internal innovation program designed to ensure we stay ahead of a rapidly changing political, cultural and technological landscape while building a culture of creativity and continuous learning. We’re seeking a founding Director to build this lab from the ground up, working closely with our teams to solve problems, generate breakthrough ideas, and run bold experiments that amplify our impact.
You’ll be deeply embedded in our culture, teaching design thinking and experimentation skills across the organization while also leading high-stakes experiments that could become our “next big things.” You’ll report to our CEO and work closely with board member Jonah Sachs, author of the innovation bible “Unsafe Thinking,” as your mentor and strategic advisor.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
Build and Lead Team
- Recruit and manage team members (2-3 to start, including project managers and a multi-disciplinary researcher)
- Develop innovation methodologies and common language for the lab team and larger organization
- Create clear roles and processes that maximize team creativity, efficiency and impact
Build Innovation Culture
- Design and facilitate bi-monthly innovation workshops for all staff
- Teach teams how to frame challenges as “How might we..?.” questions that lead to lean experiments
- Create rotating fellowship programs that turn staff members into innovation champions
- Develop internal learning systems to keep teams ahead of trends in AI, politics, and culture
Lead Bold Experiments
- Collaborate with every team to identify high-impact opportunities for innovation
- Design lean, fast-moving experiments that generate real signals without getting bogged down in bureaucracy
- Coordinate with our in-house research team on experiment design
- Manage a portfolio of speculative projects with balanced risk levels
- Run organization-wide hack-a-thons to identify and fund frontier programs
- Make tough calls on which experiments to kill, scale, or pivot
Drive Operational Excellence
- Partner with teams to streamline operations and identify AI/automation opportunities
- Design research projects that answer critical strategic questions teams don’t have time to explore
- Evaluate experimental results independently and push for implementation of winning approaches
- Build external reputation for ACE as an innovation leader in comms, clean energy and civic engagement
- Tell our story to funders and partners, ensuring we’re seen as one of the most innovative organizations in the world
EXAMPLE CHALLENGES YOU’LL TACKLE
- Operational Efficiency: “How might we use AI to streamline grant reporting and donor management?”
- Program Impact: “What if we redesigned our volunteer engagement journey to double retention rates?”
- Strategic Foresight: “How do we stay ahead of demographic shifts as we execute our voter registration strategy?”
- Culture Building: “How do we get all team members to identify themselves as innovators?”
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE IN YEAR ONE
- Cost savings and income growth equaling at least 2x the lab budget
- 2+ documented cases where lab assistance led to deeper campaign impact
- Staff surveys showing innovation programs increase job satisfaction and commitment
- 3+ examples where lab insights helped teams avoid costly mistakes or improve programs
- 4 thorough experiments on programs that have the potential to scale to $10M+ annually
WHO YOU ARE
Team Leadership and Facilitation
- 8+ years of professional experience with team leadership
- Background in design thinking and/or organizational change
- Track record of facilitating breakthrough creative outcomes
Lean Product Development
- 4+ years of professional experience in taking digital products from conception to go-to-market strategy and launch
- Ability to rapidly prototype, getting your hands dirty, learning what you don’t know and quickly hiring contractors for what you can’t learn
- Finding what you need off-the-shelf and building what doesn’t yet exist to fill the gaps
- Experience in designing and launching marketing campaigns using the latest and most effective tools
Skills & Mindset:
- Collaborative but Decisive: You build consensus AND have the backbone to champion bold ideas and kill weak ones
- Culture Creator: You understand how complex organizations work and how to create the culture change that necessarily precedes operational change
- Leadership & Team Building: You’ve managed people and have experience recruiting and building small teams
- Curiosity and Learning: You are a polymath, a constant learner, and always curious. Your knowledge and experience spans cultures, geographies, domains, technologies and identities
- Teacher & Doer: You can facilitate workshops that build capability while also executing complex experiments yourself
- Tech-Savvy: You spot opportunities where emerging technologies could enhance our work and quickly try out new tools
- Mission-Aligned: You care about climate, civic engagement and social change (non-profit experience helpful but not required)
- Ego-Free Experimenter: Once an experiment is chosen, you move fast, build lean, and generate real signals without letting politics getting in the way
Red Flags We’re Screening Against:
- Individual creative geniuses who want to be the idea hero
- Overly diplomatic facilitators who won’t make tough calls
- Consultants who float above teams rather than getting embedded in the culture
- People who need extensive structure or can’t thrive in fast-moving environments
POSITION DETAILS
- Annual salary range: $140,000-150,000, commensurate with experience
- Generous benefits include: Medical, Dental, Vision, 403b retirement savings plan, Vacation, Sabbatical, Paid Parental Leave, 2 Floating Holidays, 2 Community Service Floating Holidays, sick time, two weeks of full-staff time off (July 4 week and Christmas-New Year’s week), and 13 observed holidays
- ACE is an equal-opportunity employer that highly values staff diversity
- Remote position based in the US and requires occasional travel
APPLICATION GUIDELINES
Submit a resume and cover letter with a specific story about how you built collaboration to create a breakthrough creative outcome.
ACE is an equal-opportunity employer that highly values diversity, equity, and inclusion and views the climate crisis as a social justice crisis. People who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), people who experience gender oppression, people with disabilities, and people who identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community are particularly encouraged to apply.
